Nothing wrong with Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, except the price

(Photo courtesy Creative Commons)Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in Napa Valley command upwards of $300,00 per acre, especially when it means old vines, such as these at Chateau Montelena near Calistoga, Cal. High land prices is just one reason ultra-premium wines command premium prices.

The last time I encountered Rick Rozelle he was working the wine aisles at Fisher’s Liquor Barn in Grand Junction. The meeting wasn’t completely surprising since that’s where I usually find him, dispensing knowledge and turning on clients to good buys in wines.

This time he was doing something I’d heard him do before but always enjoy hearing – talking a customer out of a pricey top-shelf wine in favor of purchasing something more affordable yet just as tasty.

Once the client left, bottle in hand and smile on face, Rick and I spent a few minutes talking and he noted how many people look first to the top shelf, where you find the Screaming Eagles and Opus Ones of the wine world, as the starting point for what’s out there.

Nothing wrong with that, except that both those ultra-premium cabs will put a big dent in your bank account. On the online wine-searcher.com, a 2013 Opus One averages about $150 a bottle, “and you can get a whole lot of great wines for much less,” laughed Rozelle.

Finding the right Cabernet Sauvignon (or any wine) at just the right price often entails searching through a wall of wine. Photo by Dave Buchanan

On the whole, I consider most those upper-shelf Cabs over-priced, although that’s subjective to what you have in your pocket at the time, right?

“We’ve had people buy cases of it for weddings and stuff, so it’s not like it doesn’t sell,” Rozelle noted.

Cabernet Sauvignon remains “America’s most beloved red wine,” wrote Food & Wines eminent wine writer Ray Isle way back in 2005. “In 2009, California crushed almost 450,000 tons of Cabernet grapes, an amount roughly equal to one bottle per person for the entire U.S. population.”

One reason Cabernet Sauvignon still is so popular (it’s the second most-sold wine, period, right behind Chardonnay) is that among those millions of bottles are many selling for under $10, although you won’t find many really good California Cabs at that price.

You might find something from my colleague Jeff Siegel (www.winecurmudgeon.com) , who puts the cut-off line around $10 but has been known to inflate that number a bit when the wine is particularly good.

“Listen, it’s not easy finding cheap Cabernet Sauvignon that tastes like Cabernet Sauvignon,” said Siegel during the 2016 Colorado Governor’s Wine Competition for which he was a judge. “If there were, I’d drink more of it.”

He earlier wrote about Avalon Cabernet Sauvignon, which he described as offering the quality of Napa cabernet “at two-thirds to three-quarters of the price of comparable wines.”

The grapes aren’t Napa – they come from Lodi, Paso Robles, and Monterey County. Which is why Fisher’s Liquor Barn carries the 2014 vintage for under $10.

Siegel, who will return to Denver next month for the 2017 edition of the Governor’s Cup, wrote in a recent blog post that too many “value priced” Cabernets “are fruity and sticky, without the heft and tannins that cabernet is supposed to have— call them cabernet lite.”

“Or, if they taste like cabernet, they cost at least $20, and that’s not the point of what we do here,” Siegel wrote.

Some of the world’s best and most-desired Cabernet Sauvignon comes from Napa Valley. This Beaulieu Vineyard 2014 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is a value and can be found for as low as $25. Photo by Dave Buchanan

Simply, Napa Valley has the perfect climate and soils for growing the grape. But Napa Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are the highest-priced grapes in California, which means along with accelerating land costs ($300k-plus per acre), the price of a bottle of wine continues to grow.

Mike Fisher, on the blog Vinsights, wrote that grape costs should not exceed 25-percent of a wine’s selling price for a winery to experience a “reasonable profit.”

Because Napa grape costs are the highest in California, Fischer noted, virtually all red wine made with Napa grapes must be retail priced at $40 or more per bottle for the winery to receive a reasonable profit.

But wait. There are a lot of grapes being grown outside of Napa, and that’s where we should look for affordable Cabernet Sauvignon.

Paso Robles, Lodi, Monterrey, Central Coast, the list goes on of places where Cabernet Sauvignon thrives. And that’s just in California.

And if that’s not enough, Wines&Vines online recently quoted Tony Correia, a real estate appraiser and consultant from Sonoma, Cal., saying, “Any land that’s in Napa Valley, in the watershed of the Napa River, that can be planted to Cabernet and produce a good crop of Cabernet is being planted today, and they can make a call and sell the fruit for $5,000, $6,000 $7,000” per ton.

That’s about 3.5 times what those grapes cost in 1995, when the average price per ton was $2,000.

One more thing. One reason some of the ultras are so ultra is cachet. People want to feel important and have other people say nice things about them and one way to impress is to pour a wine everyone knows cost a king’s ransom.